June 2008

June 30, 2008

I think I would lose my blog tagline if I didn't point out that the History Channel will give us 120 minutes of premium television with the debut of All About Dung tonight at 9ET:

Join host Monty Halls* as he investigates the historical, medical,
scientific and evolutionary importance of poop on an excremental safari
guaranteed to fascinate even the most squeamish of viewers. You'll be
surprised by the amazing manner in which the world puts dung to use.
Discover that through a 14,000-year-old human dung deposit it has been
determined that humans inhabited North America 1300 years earlier than
previously thought. Climb a 100-foot mountain of bat guano in Borneo
that is teeming with insect life. Travel to India and view housewarming
rituals using sacred cow dung as good luck. Finally Halls drinks coffee
made from poop and investigates, through their large droppings, why
mammoths might have disappeared.

*In case you're wondering, it's not the Let's Make a Deal guy. That would be Monty Hall. Though it would probably be damn good television if they could get Monty Hall talking to Monty Halls about dung.

You may have heard that a new ("wind"-aided) 100-meter record was set yesterday at the U.S. Olympic trials. The guy who broke the record is named Tyson Gay. Well, guess what happens when his last name meets the robots at a Christian fundie site.

As the documentary demonstrates, the bottom for the pair came when Mr. Thompson was assigned to cover the Rumble in the Jungle, the fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire in 1974. Mr. Steadman explains in the film that in an act of enormous cocaine-assisted hubris (or perhaps fear that Mr. Ali, one of his heroes, was about to take a huge beating), Thompson gave away his tickets to the fight and went for a swim in the hotel pool. In doing so, he missed one of the greatest upsets in boxing history and, more important for a journalist, did not get the story.

By the accounts of many Thompson never recovered from that episode, gradually morphing into the character of Uncle Duke that Garry Trudeau introduced in “Doonesbury,” a cartoon figure who fired automatic weapons from his sun deck at apparitions and enemies that only he could see. He became the sum of his trademarks — the sunglasses, cigarette holder and inchoate rage — and ended up imprisoned by them.

“He was the master persona maker,” said Douglas Brinkley, the historian and friend of Thompson’s who serves as executor of the estate. “If Ernest Hemingway was going to go big-game hunting in Africa, Hunter wanted to use a submachine gun to hunt wild boar in Big Sur, Calif. He was dangerous, like handling nitroglycerin, and he liked to keep it that way.”

In the end everyone wanted to be around Thompson except Thompson. And on a bright winter day in Woody Creek, with his son in the house — Juan Thompson sardonically terms it a “warm family moment” in the film — he called his own bluff and blew his brains out.

He was infirm at the time, spending time in a wheelchair. Given his fundamental allergy to institutions like hospitals, his decision to set the terms of his exit is unsurprising.

“Hunter was very much one to share the pain when things went wrong, but he would share the glory as well,” said Anita Thompson, who married him in 2003. “He was a generous person, but he ended up surrounded by leeches and hanger-on-ers. It is the curse of fame.”

Following up on the post last week about the imminent demise of the newsroom copyeditor, an emailer sent along this link to a similar article by Gene Weingarten in the Washington Post. There's even a little copyediting test that goes along with this one:

The inessentialness of copy editors is underscored by the advent of sophisticated spellchecking systems which have introduced a hole new level of error-free proofreading. No longer can we say that the editor's penis mightier than the sword. The sword's main foe is a computer now, and the computer is up to to the task.

But nowadays, things have changed. "Scoop" is gone. Young reporters are all named "P. Laurence Butterfield Jr." and they arrive at their first newspaper jobs fresh-faced and competent, straight from New Haven, Conn., with their high-faluting Princeton educations. They don't need copyeditors.

Truth to tell, I feel badly for all copy editors whom, I'm afraid, will suddenly find themselves out of a job. Time has past them by, however, efeated the Red Sox 6-5 in extra innings and it doesn't make sense for us to weep for copyeditors anymore than it makes sense for us to lament the replacement of bank tellers with automated ATM machines.

June 28, 2008

I mentioned last week that one of the highlights of seeing centro-matic live was hearing them finish their set with a great The English Beat cover. Well, now you can hear the cover, courtesy of captains dead (and me, of course).

O, The Oprah Magazine, gives us "The wisest poetry, the most extraordinary prose: five top-shelf books that will blow open your understanding of the world." Interesting selections considering the source. I do wish the almighty O could give us the choices on one page so that we could read without clicking through. Does she really need the page view revenue from her site advertisers?

Are we in the last days of the newsroom copy editors? The NYT's Lawrence Downes thinks so:

The job hasn’t disappeared yet, but it is swiftly evolving, away from an emphasis on style and consistency, from making a physical object perfect the first time. The path to excellence is now through speed, agility and creativity in using multiple expressive outlets for information in all its shapes and sounds.

As newspapers lose money and readers, they have been shedding great swaths of expensive expertise. They have been forced to shrink or eliminate the multiply redundant levels of editing that distinguish their kind of journalism from what you find on TV, radio and much of the Web. Copy editors are being bought out or forced out; they are dying and not being replaced.

Webby doesn’t necessarily mean sloppy, of course, and online news operations will shine with all the brilliance that the journalists who create them can bring. But in that world of the perpetual present tense — post it now, fix it later, update constantly — old-time, persnickety editing may be a luxury in which only a few large news operations will indulge. It will be an artisanal product, like monastery honey and wooden yachts.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had no idea that Ezra Pound was from Idaho. I definitely do now. The Boise Weeklygives us an extensive look at the impact that the state with the most interesting shape had on the poet:

Some scholars now theorize that it was Pound's childhood in the Idaho silver mining town that shaped his view of global economics, which in turn led to his fascist and anti-Semitic leanings.

Pound set out to change not only the world of poetry, but the world of banking and finance as well. His plan to eliminate debt by taking control of credit from central banks, and giving it to communities was fatefully tied to his apparent belief in an international conspiracy of Jewish bankers to rule the world through financial bondage. He accused these conspirators of "usury"—charging high interest rates on loans—which he claimed made slaves out of the citizens of a nation and pawns of their governments.

While Pound's Jewish conspiracy theory may seem wildly misguided today, the perennial mistrust of the rulers of capital is still as fresh as a daisy in his hometown, where his childhood home now houses the Sun Valley Center for the Arts.

Between the two World Wars, Pound became one of the giants of literary modernism; editing T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land," trading conversation for boxing lessons with Hemingway, and coming to the aid of many of the writers of his generation who worked, as he did, to free English verse from the moralistic, Victorian constraints of the 19th century.

June 24, 2008

In case for whatever reason you've been a little hesitant to grab a copy of Playboy, and I can't imagine why, well, it should make you happy to know that the Denis Johnson novel that is now being serialized in the magazine will be available in book form from FSG in the Spring of 09. No word on whether or not photos will be included.

Canada's National Postdiscusses the books they claim that you are embarrased to be seen reading in public, and they somehow managed to get a quote that only Forrest Gump could love:

But there will always be literary snobs. British Columbia romance novelist Nancy Warren, author of The One I Want and Harlequin's NASCAR series of novels, says she was recently arguing with a friend who writes comic books about who gets dumped on the most. She says books like hers are "like a very nice piece of chocolate. You wouldn't want to live on it exclusively, but you would never want to deny somebody such a nice and delicious treat."

Warren says she's heard all the criticism, and has learned to brush it off. Although she prefers to the term beach read to the "trash" tag her books are sometimes slapped with.

Sometimes I'm thankful that I'm allergic to chocolate. Because really, I can't think of anything I'd rather not read than a NASCAR Harlequin, and I don't care if I am dumping.

June 23, 2008

Times Online asked various literary types to name books "that made them angry just thinking about them; that were once clotted with extravagant critical praise....And that, from either category, we now realise are close to worthless."

Many mentioned Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Carlos Casteneda’s interminable drug-soaked hippie ramblings, which I thought I was terribly cool to be reading as a kid. Luke Rhinehart’s The Dice Man scored heavily, too, and the names of Colin Wilson and Mervyn Peake were invoked with a sort of guttural sneer and one or two expletives on several occasions. Yet two names kept cropping up when my respondents were asked for the misbegotten stuff of serious literature, the people who still today have a reputation: John Fowles and Anthony bloody “Pole”.

My immediate response would be most anything Jane Austen, but I need to give it some more thought. I'm hoping to do a new round of bookshelf organizing in the next couple of weeks, so maybe at that point I'll be able to come up with my own stack of cringe-worthy books. Anything immediately come to mind for you?

You can see the list of nominations that Times Online came up with here.

June 20, 2008

I'm glad Ed's back doing his round-ups, even if he can't get things to work right to do his round-ups. Just knowing Ed is there with his round-ups makes me feel better. Because he's Ed and Ed cares.

I used to round-ups. I'd spend long minutes scouring the bloglines and the googles just looking for things to round--up. Now I look for that one thing that makes me say, "hey, that's the one thing" and then I link to it. But I think I want to start doing round-ups again. Only I'll call my round-ups something else.

They'll probably still be round.

Last night, I went to see music played. It reminded me of how good music is when seen live. Of course, it took a really good band (and good company) to get me out of the house, and Centro-matic is that. They are damn good. If you've been listening to them for any amount of time, you know that. And the 50 people that showed up in Chapel Hill to see them will probably attest to that.

The M's are pretty damn good too. In fact, they were impressively good. Whatever that means. I'd try to be like "you ain't no picasso" and say they sound like something mixed with something, but I think they sounded like a cross between the letter l and the letter n. Which is better when you know what the letter p sounds like these days. You can stream their album here.

I do recommend.

But I was looking forward to Centro-matic. And they didn't disappoint. In fact, I feel better now. Not so guilty that it's been more than 18 months since I've had my hand stamped to enter a club to see live music. I was beginning to fear that the next show I would see would involve puppets skating on ice while speaking Spanish or laughing in some frequency that only a kid of 2 can pick up on.

I'm glad it didn't come to that. I got my hand stamped and paid $3 to get a card that tells me I'm a member of a club that sales real honest-to-bygod liquor in the state of North Carolina.

And I got to listen to music. Music that was impressively good, whatever that means.

If you get a chance, you should go get your hand stamped to see Centro-matic.

The folks at PopMatters have kicked off a new series of essays discussing used books and the good old secondhand bookstore:

The secondhand book is more than merely a bargain for the book lover. It’s a cross-cultural, inter-generational link between readers. A torch-race, of sorts, with batons passed in all directions, from the collector to the student, the casual reader to the obsessive.

Secondhand books and the emporiums they inhabit affect book lovers in different ways. The romantics love the inscriptions from Nancy to John, the while collectors will peruse shelves for hours looking for works entirely untouched. Students love a cheap copy of Fall semester’s Marquez text, while the book-addicted who spends every free weekend road-tripping to every Salvos store within reach will grab two copies of One Hundred Years of Solitude because three bucks is just such a good price.

Speaking of (in a way), I didn't know until last week that Big Lots sells books. The selection wasn't all that great, but there were a few that would qualify as shelf-worthy. Big Lots also has pick axes and fertilizer. Just thought I'd let you know.

June 17, 2008

I'm a little late with this considering the space shuttle has already landed, but it's pretty cool nonetheless:

The seven astronauts aboard the shuttle Discovery are up and eager a few hours to themselves today as they prepare for a Saturday landing.

NASA’s Mission Control here at the Johnson Space Center roused the astronauts at 3:32 a.m. EDT (0732 GMT) with the song “Crystal Frontier” by the band Calexico, a tune chosen for shuttle commander Mark Kelly by his wife Gabrielle Giffords, a U.S. Congresswoman from Arizona, and his two daughters.

Also, if, like me, you're a fan of the band, you'll be happy to know that their new album, Carried to Dust, will be out on September 9th. Gives you something to look forward to beyond the long, grueling summer months.

storySouth has announced its top 10 online short stories of 2007. Voting has begun to determine the ultimate winner of the 2008 Million Writers Award and will continue through July 17. The top 10 stories are:

I actually forgot yesterday was Bloomsday. I think I forget every year until after the fact which probably protects me from having to do anything in celebration. Not that I'm against Bloomsday or Ulysses or Joyce, but I have too many celebrations to worry about without having to bother over one based on a book that still makes one whole side of my body ache when I recall my time spent reading it. But plenty of you like to get in the spirit and thankfully the Toronto Star asks a question that I've longed wondered myself: What is it that makes perfectly sane people dress up like characters from a book or a movie or a television show on any other day but October 31st?

Steve Joordens, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus, says there's no good answer to explain why some feel the urge to dress up like Mr. Spock but not, say, the Terminator – or why groups re-enact scenes from Ulysses but never think to bludgeon a white whale in honour of Moby Dick.

"I know in the case of Star Trek, it appeals to a group of people who might otherwise have been picked on or felt subordinate," Joordens says.

"Harry Potter is maybe the same. Both are geared toward intellectual, scientific, or people who felt alone or closeted in their interests."

What about the literary cults that celebrate Bloomsday or flock to Key West every year for the Ernest Hemingway Look-Alike contest?

Joordens posits that perhaps cults form around works that succeed despite mainstream rejection.

In the case of Ulysses, Joyce's work was banned in places and had a very small print run. However, early admirers included T.E. Lawrence and Hemingway, stirring avant-garde interest in its opaque storytelling.

In the case of Star Wars and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Joordens says cults may just like to dress up to escape the confines of their everyday wardrobes – and lives.

June 16, 2008

What does it say about the prospects for the week ahead when the first thing I read this morning was this?

After 15 years of playing country anthems, the “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” duo Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn are venturing into the literary world with their debut novel, “The Adventures of Slim and Howdy.”

Die-hard fans may recognize the characters of Slim and Howdy from the album liner notes in all Brooks Dunn albums. The twosome started telling tales in earnest on their 1991 debut “Brand New Man,” but it wasn’t until a few albums later that Brooks Dunn created their alter egos, Slim (Dunn) and Howdy (Brooks).

Though talked about for years, the book, which is divided into short chapters for easy — perhaps bathroom — reading, is finally in stores.

Of course, the obvious question is why would I possibly be reading about Brooks and Dunn? Don't ask.

June 14, 2008

Beginning with its July issue, which arrives at newsstands on Friday, Playboy will publish [Denis Johnson's] next novel, “Nobody Move,” in four monthly installments of 10,000 words each, to be written on deadline each month through the October issue. The magazine described “Nobody Move” as a hard-boiled noir in the style of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but Mr. Johnson said he was also inspired by an earlier writer. “I’ve always admired Charles Dickens, who wrote big, involved novels in monthly installments,” he said in a statement, “and I wanted to find out what it was like. It’s a little nerve-racking.”